Message resent, original sent 5th March, didn't make it.
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>I certainly never meant my earlier comments to mean that we shouldn't think
>about this issue and try to act responsibly, just that, without hard evidence
>we were never likely to reach any sort of informed opinion.
>
>I remember spotlighting with a group of birdwatchers near the tip of Cape
>York a few years back when we happened on a Buff-breasted Paradise-Kingfisher
>asleep on a branch. The light didn't appear to bother it at all, we walked up
>to the bird and could have picked it up if we had wished to, it slept on
>regardless.
>
>I recall a program on ABC TV several years ago (it may have been Quantum) in
>which a relatively tame Kestrel had been used for experiments to determine
>why birds' vision was so much sharper than that of humans. It had something
>to do with flushing chemicals of some sort from the eye. Apparently we do
>this almost continuously, whereas the bird did it all at once at regularly
>spaced intervals. This meant that the bird was temporarily blinded every now
>and then while this process went on. It would be a simple matter for those
>researchers to discover the effects of spotlights on birds, if only we knew
>who they were.
>
>Paul Osborn
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